1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an electronic percussion instrument, and more particularly, to an electronic hi-hat cymbal for producing a musical tone of a hi-hat cymbal used in a drum set made up of acoustic musical instruments out of an electronic sound generated by an electronic tone generator.
2. Description of the Related Art
An electronic drum serving as an electronic percussion instrument is a percussion instrument wherein when a pad (head) of the electronic drum is struck with a stick (drumstrik) and so forth, a strike condition (stress, and so on) of the pad is detected by a strike sensor made up of a piezoelectric transducer, and so forth, provided on the back side of the pad, and an electronic sound is produced from an electronic tone generator based on a detection signal from the strike sensor. Further, with a plurality of electronic drums in combination, it is possible to make up an electronic drum set similar to an acoustic drum set made up of acoustic percussion instruments.
In the electronic drum set as well, use is made of an electronic hi-hat cymbal corresponding to a hi-hat cymbal (hereinafter referred to merely as a hi-hat) used in the acoustic drum set. The hi-hat of an acoustic percussion instrument is comprised of two cymbals, upper cymbal and lower cymbal, that are opened and closed by operation to step on a footpedal (hi-hat controller) provided as an accessory, and the upper cymbal is shifted up and down according to a stepped degree on the footpedal, thereby opening, and closing spacing between the two cymbals, so that a musical tone produced when the upper cymbal is struck with the stick undergoes variation.
For example, a clear musical tone (closed hi-hat) produced in a state where the footpedal is stepped down to the lowest position is used for rhythm-keeping while the closed hi-hat in combination with a stretched musical tone (open hi-hat) produced in a state where the footpedal is not stepped down is used for accentuation. Accordingly, in order to play music with the use of the electronic hi-hat in the same way as with the case of the hi-hat of the acoustic musical instrument, it is necessary to cause the electronic hi-hat to selectively produce a plurality of different electronic sounds as described above.
For that reason, in, for example, JP S63-298394 A, there has been disclosed a technology whereby an electronic percussion instrument in imitation of the hi-hat cymbal is provided with switches as two operations elements for use as a stick and footpedal respectively, and by the ON/OFF operations in combination, there are selectively produced a hi-hat closed sound in an operation condition 1 (ON/ON), a hi-hat foot musical tone in an operation condition 2 (OFF/ON) and a hi-hat open sound in an operation condition 3 (ON/OFF), as shown in, for example, FIG. 8.
Further, in, for example, JP H6-35449 A, there has been disclosed a technology whereby with another electronic percussion instrument in imitation of the hi-hat cymbal, an envelope of a musical tone to be outputted and tone color characteristics are controlled depending on a strike force against hi-hat pads, and a present manipulation position of a footpedal. Further, there has been disclosed a method of controlling the envelope whereby the maximum value of the envelope and time before reaching the maximum value are varied according to the strike force against the pads, and decay time is caused to change according to the manipulation position of footpedal.
In addition, there has been described an example of a method of controlling the tone color characteristics whereby a plurality of data on waveform (for example, data on the open hi-hat waveform, and data on the closed hi-hat waveform) are synthesized, thereby varying a mixing ratio thereof, and a filter factor for filtering the data on the waveform is varied.
With the electronic percussion instrument as the hi-hat cymbal, described in JP S63-298394 A, however, a strike sound corresponding to a combination of the ON/OFF conditions of the two operation elements at the time of occurrence of switch events (ON or OFF of the switch) is simply produced, so that it has been impossible to vary the strike sound even if the operation elements are operated for ON/OFF during occurrence of the strike sound. Consequently, it has been impossible to change a tone color, and so forth by operating the pedal after striking as in the case of actually playing the hi-hat.
Also, with the electronic percussion instrument as the hi-hat cymbal, described in JP H6-35449 A, during a musical tone being produced, it is also possible to cause the musical tone produced to undergo a change according to pedal manipulation information such as the position of the footpedal, time for returning the same to the original position, and so forth, however, since a method for implementing the above is simply to change the envelope of the original musical tone waveform, and change the mixing ratio of two musical tone waveforms, there has arisen a problem in that change in tone color becomes unnatural.